


A Bird In The Hand

by UnderTheFridge



Category: Warhammer 40.000, Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors
Genre: Gen, I hereby commandeer this animal for the Imperium, Pets, and also because it reminds me of me and that's very important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 19:20:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10623456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnderTheFridge/pseuds/UnderTheFridge
Summary: ...is worth two in the Warp?(or, the epic saga of Albus the peacock)





	

Smoke still rose from parts of the fortress; a few tiny pockets of resistance that were all the Imperial forces had encountered on this world, the innermost of the system. It was hot and still, and the grey columns from the smouldering buildings hung lazily, distinct against the blue sky, the portents of an easy victory.

The other worlds had been harder to subdue, requiring the full force of the Emperor’s fury – but this, with its single large continent and miles upon miles of dense, salty ocean – had already turned its rebellion inwards. Most of the landmass was ruled by a single, despotic human, who kept its people in poverty and hardship while constructing ever more elaborate palaces for himself. He was despised by all, and upon receiving the hail of the Imperium, the populace gladly rose up and toppled him from his throne. A life under the command of an unseen Emperor seemed to be preferable to life under the Dear Great King, as he was called in the main language.

His last palace was a towering edifice of sandstone, ringed by bizarre minarets decorated with, of all things, animal skins. They were dried and stretched, and hung from the walls like a cross between memorial banners and the wares of a carpet-seller. Propaganda would have it that the King – the Leader of Us All, the Sun and Stars, a small fat man with a weak right arm – had slain these beasts himself, in acts of heroism so numerous they almost seemed mundane. Perhaps he _had_ hunted frequently in his youth, but the sheer number and variety of skins outweighed any mortal man’s achievement. The revolutionaries responsible for escorting the Imperial commanders freely admitted that much of his life story was exaggerated or outright fabricated: not that anyone was allowed to reveal the reality of it before now.

The planetary governors, in the Emperor’s name, would be installed in a new palace. It was being built for them at this very moment, the revolutionaries said. This old structure was to be torn down as a symbol of oppression, and the stone used to make homes for the common people. It was already crumbling at the edges, truth be told; even the King’s veritable army of staff had never been enough to cover the whole compound, and parts fell into disrepair without anyone noticing or caring.

One of these parts had been the King’s private zoo, filled with a multitude of animals that he had, for some reason, decided to grant the gift of continued existence. They might end up on the walls of the palace eventually, but their natural lives were spent in relative comfort – especially as the bars and locks that held them in decayed, and they were released to roam freely on the yellow-brown stone of the battlements.

They were of no further use, the revolutionaries said, just like the palace. The new rulers could take whichever animals they wished, or have them killed, or sent back to the wild. A big cat, deep ochre with a half-striped, half-spotted coat, ambled past. The General of the Imperial Army units watched it admiringly.

“I think I’d like one of those,” he said.

“I’ve spotted at least four,” his right-hand man offered. “I believe one of them had babies.”

“Excellent. Tigers for everybody!”

“Are they _tigers_?”

“We had something like that back on the old homeworld, and they were called tigers. It’ll do.”

“On Macragge, they were called ocelots,” Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the Ultramarines, stared down at the humans. The blue of his armour was deep and vibrant under the bright sun, contrasting and complementing the rich royal purple of his brother’s, gold highlights on both reflecting dazzling rays. “But they were a little smaller, and not as fierce.”

“Do they make good pets, my lord?”

“They eat rather a lot,” Guilliman said noncommittally, as his elbow was grabbed.

“Look at that!”

The bird came up to them, chest puffed as if about to demand an explanation for what they were doing in its palace. It was about four feet tall from ground to head, plus a tiny spray of thin quills from just above its eyes that looked as if somebody had used its skull as a pin-cushion. Its tail stuck out behind, extending at least five feet, bundles of overlapping feathers forming a heavy, indistinct mass. It examined them with beady eyes – the only dark feature in its entire body. The rest – feathers and all – were completely white. _Indignant snowflake_ was the first thing that came to mind.

“What is it, Roboute?”

“It’s a peafowl of some kind,” he replied, noticing that his fellow primarch’s gaze was riveted on the bird. “More specifically, a peacock. Only the males have tails like that. They’re not usually white.”

“It’s albino?”

“No – you see, the eyes and nails have some pigment. True albinos have pink eyes and no pigment at all. A white peacock – or _leucistic_ , to give its proper title – is just a colour variation; there are also white-spotted, brown, indigo and green varieties. It’s quite a rare phenotype.”

The humans were awed at his depth of wisdom. Most likely they expected him to be purely full of tactics and specifications. He shrugged. Sometimes, an eidetic memory was a disadvantage. He had never, ever thought that the minutiae of peafowl care and breeding would be useful – but in it went nonetheless. And here he was, spilling the knowledge some hundred years later in the most unlikely of circumstances.

“What do they eat?”

“Insects, some plant matter, seeds, grains and the occasional amphibian or small rodent. They are birds, but they can tackle a mouse because of their size. They consume a lot of protein.”

The peacock ruffled its wings and hopped onto a low wall, from where its tail cascaded to the flagstones in a runnel of pure white.

“He’s exquisite.”

The bird was pale with dark eyes. They were allowed to take any animal that caught their fancy. Peafowl were relatively easy to keep. It didn’t take a tactical genius to see what would happen next.

Roboute couldn’t stop a smile twitching at his face as Fulgrim reached out and scooped up the peacock. Dwarfed by his form, it wriggled for a moment in sheer incredulity, its dignity briefly compromised. The primarch tucked it under his arm where it rested, eyes wide, pinned between plates of ceramite and none the wiser.

“You’re taking the peacock?”

“I am taking the peacock, Roboute. I think I’ll call him Albus.”

It was also known, according to the book that had worked its way into Guilliman’s vast memory, that peafowl were arrogant creatures. The hens could be kept in groups, but rival males would fight. They tended to bully other fowl and other animals, even including cats and dogs. Albus was on his own, and that was a good thing – but he was also extremely spoiled, which made him a danger to all and sundry; or at least, all he didn’t like.

Solomon Demeter held the bird at arm’s length at Albus tried valiantly to claw his eyes out. There was no reason at all for an armoured Astartes to be injured by a forest-dwelling relative of the chicken, and the First Captain was determined not to be the first to sustain wounds via peacock. It would go on his record. He would be a laughing-stock for as long as he lived, even if he outlived his primarch’s pet.

“You seem to be bonding,” Vespasian said wryly from somewhere beyond the blizzard of wings assaulting Solomon’s chest plate.

“He’s trying to kill me.”

“Put him down, then.”

“I can’t, Commander. We are both needed on the bridge and it takes him too long to get there on his own. If he could be relied upon to get there at all.”

“Here.” Vespasian seized Albus and managed to stifle his escape attempts. “I’ll accompany you, as official Peacock-Bearer.”

The bird’s outraged cries echoed through the corridors of the ship.

\---

The ultimate purpose of any species, in any habitat, is to pass on its genes. So far, Albus had not found a hen with whom to raise a clutch of eggs and start a new generation. However, his luck looked to be changing. Her feathered beauty stirred his avian heart, and he rattled his tail to loosen the interlocking strands, before spreading it in a graceful fan.

The quivering majesty of his plumage was surely enough to win over any lady of good breeding. He turned, slowly, to let her appreciate it. The quills made a staccato whispering sound, which reached every corner of the acoustically perfect design that was the Heliopolis.

“I think he likes you,” Fulgrim said.

“I think he may be mistaken,” Sanguinius replied, concerned.

“Well, of course. You’re not a suitable prospect at all.”

“I only hope he isn’t too infatuated….”

“You worry too much, my dear. He’s displaying, he’s enjoying himself. And his memory isn’t all that long. Observe.”

A serf appeared, proffering a small canister. Twisting off the top revealed that it was full of squirming, inch-long brown worms. One was pulled out – and Albus immediately took notice, folding his tail and springing across the floor to pluck the worm from the hand of the Phoenician. He gulped it down and stretched his neck out for more.

“His attentions are easily diverted.”

“Just like yourself, brother,” Sanguinius said, but without malice. Albus strutted over to him and pecked at one of the gleaming chains hanging from his armour. The angel tugged it from his beak. “Don’t eat that, Albus. It’s bad for you.”

“He’s tried to eat everything at least once. He has no sense of propriety. Or any real understanding of danger.” Fulgrim held up a particularly fat worm, and Albus followed it, fluttering onto the primarch’s shoulder. Sitting opposite the gilded wing on the other side, the peacock looked like a particularly fine feathered cloak – albeit one that was avidly consuming worms inches away from its owner’s face.

“How long do they live?”

“Fifty standard years, according to Roboute, in the right conditions.”

“Will you breed him?”

“What with? The white genotype is recessive, as far as I understand. There were no females in the tyrant’s collection – I would have to find or source white peahens. I’m willing to do it, of course, but if there aren’t any…. I have had a DNA sample stored, though, so he can be cloned.”

“Can you generate birds… _ex utero_ – or _ex ovum,_ I suppose – using our equipment?”

“If anyone can do it, Fabius can.”

“Perpetual peacocks.”

“He’s such a fascinating bird, you know.”

Albus caught sight of Sanguinius’ wings, leapt to the ground, and fanned his tail again. His procession was stately, yet hopeful.

“Do you think he will ever give up on me?”

“We shall have to see.”

\---

Albus, to his credit, never did give up on his aloof yet charming lady-friend. He also never gave up on his master, the demi-god who fed him worms.

Even as the Imperium tore itself apart, the treachery of Horus was revealed in all its putrescent glory, and the Emperor’s Children fell further than had ever been thought possible, Albus roosted in the high spaces of the _Pride of the Emperor_ , sometimes having to flee hordes of maddened warriors or crew. Sometimes, when the voice from the sword stopped whispering and a little lucidity returned, the primarch would remember his pet and call the peacock down, and offer platitudes and morsels to the bird (still well-fed from foraging), and tell him secrets of corruption and terrible, terrible fear.

At Istvaan IV, Albus wandered onto the bridge, ignored by servitors and commanders alike, at the summit of it all, and died quietly and peacefully. His end came at about the same time as that of Ferrus Manus, and when the daemon returned in his master’s body, it neither noticed nor cared that the peacock was gone.

Except, of course, that not all of him went.

The sample marked ‘Albus’ sat on a shelf for a long while, until Fabius took it down. He couldn’t recall a marine named Albus, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been one. His mind was on other things, greater things, things that could rewrite the future of mankind – but he couldn’t resist gestating the material, just to see what it was.

All embryos start off looking roughly the same, and it was only after a few weeks that Fabius realised he had something that was in no way human. But beings that were in no way human could be said to be his hallmark now, and he let it grow.

When the bird struggled free of the thick fluids surrounding it, stubby wing-buds trembling, a few tiny white quills plastered to its body, the former Apothecary had a flash of recall.

“It’s a peacock,” he said, and one of his specimens turned its head, cringing in fear though he wasn’t addressing it. “It’s that peacock he took from the old King’s zoo.”

The conditions weren’t ideal, and it never attained its full size or grandeur, but the stunted form of Albus II was still regal, still strutting like he owned the place. And it brought a wealth of new genes to Fabius’s experiments, and he imagined Astartes with huge peacocks’ tails (as others no doubt used to see their legion, in times past), and laughed.

So he kept the sample, as he went rogue. Once, a part of it was passed to a black-market dealer in exchange for safe passage; the poor fool believed it to be the gene-seed of a Space Marine. It was spliced, and tinkered, and human subjects gained feathers, and scales, and keen bird-like eyesight. But there was plenty left, and Fabius liked to entertain a notion that was fanciful, even to his own ambitious outlook.

One day, he would find his lord, on the fabled world of excess – if such a place even existed – and he would present him with a whole flock of white peacocks.


End file.
